mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Zero-Shot Whole-Body Humanoid Control via Behavioral Foundation Models

arXiv 2504.11054 ↗First posted 15 Apr 2025cs.LGcited by 56

On the map: Deep reinforcement learning methods → Deep RL algorithms and representations

Abstract (arXiv)

Unsupervised reinforcement learning (RL) aims at pre-training agents that can solve a wide range of downstream tasks in complex environments. Despite recent advancements, existing approaches suffer from several limitations: they may require running an RL process on each downstream task to achieve a satisfactory performance, they may need access to datasets with good coverage or well-curated task-specific samples, or they may pre-train policies with unsupervised losses that are poorly correlated with the downstream tasks of interest. In this paper, we introduce a novel algorithm regularizing unsupervised RL towards imitating trajectories from unlabeled behavior datasets. The key technical novelty of our method, called Forward-Backward Representations with Conditional-Policy Regularization, is to train forward-backward representations to embed the unlabeled trajectories to the same latent space used to represent states, rewards, and policies, and use a latent-conditional discriminator to encourage policies to ``cover'' the states in the unlabeled behavior dataset. As a result, we can learn policies that are well aligned with the behaviors in the dataset, while retaining zero-shot generalization capabilities for reward-based and imitation tasks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this new approach in a challenging humanoid control problem: leveraging observation-only motion capture datasets, we train Meta Motivo, the first humanoid behavioral foundation model that can be prompted to solve a variety of whole-body tasks, including motion tracking, goal reaching, and reward optimization. The resulting model is capable of expressing human-like behaviors and it achieves competitive performance with task-specific methods while outperforming state-of-the-art unsupervised RL and model-based baselines.

Key facts. Cited by 56 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Deep RL algorithms and representations, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods. Builds on 90 of its 106 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2025.

Builds on

90 of 106 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024Bigger, Regularized, Optimistic: scaling for compute and sample-efficient continuous control25 May
  2. 2024Unsupervised Zero-Shot Reinforcement Learning via Functional Reward Encodings27 Feb
  3. 2024Foundation Policies with Hilbert Representations23 Feb
  4. 2024Mixtures of Experts Unlock Parameter Scaling for Deep RL13 Feb
  5. 2024Zero-Shot Reinforcement Learning via Function Encoders30 Jan

Other references · 85

  1. 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 3,080
  2. 2018Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methodscited by 2,417
  3. 2017Improved Training of Wasserstein GANscited by 2,235
  4. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,191
  5. 2022RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scalecited by 2,061
  6. 2018Spectral Normalization for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 1,636
  7. 2016Generative Adversarial Imitation Learningcited by 1,597
  8. 2021Decision Transformer: Reinforcement Learning via Sequence Modelingcited by 1,546
  9. 2023Mastering Diverse Domains through World Modelscited by 1,253
  10. 2019AMASS: Archive of Motion Capture as Surface Shapescited by 1,236
  11. 2017Curiosity-driven Exploration by Self-supervised Predictioncited by 1,194
  12. 2017Hindsight Experience Replaycited by 1,136
38 more
  1. 2022Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesiscited by 1,061
  2. 2021Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learningcited by 998
  3. 2018Exploration by Random Network Distillationcited by 993
  4. 2018Diversity is All You Need: Learning Skills without a Reward Functioncited by 752
  5. 2020AWAC: Accelerating Online Reinforcement Learning with Offline Datasetscited by 671
  6. 2023TD-MPC2: Scalable, Robust World Models for Continuous Controlcited by 512
  7. 2016f-GAN: Training Generative Neural Samplers using Variational Divergence Minimizationcited by 506
  8. 2022VIP: Towards Universal Visual Reward and Representation via Value-Implicit Pre-Trainingcited by 395
  9. 2020dm_control: Software and Tasks for Continuous Controlcited by 375
  10. 2022Video PreTraining (VPT): Learning to Act by Watching Unlabeled Online Videoscited by 345
  11. 2019Dynamics-Aware Unsupervised Discovery of Skillscited by 313
  12. 2023Language to Rewards for Robotic Skill Synthesiscited by 312
  13. 2022Behavior Transformers: Cloning k modes with one stonecited by 304
  14. 2016Variational Intrinsic Controlcited by 267
  15. 2023Imitating Human Behaviour with Diffusion Modelscited by 263
  16. 2023Perpetual Humanoid Control for Real-time Simulated Avatarscited by 218
  17. 2021Reinforcement Learning with Prototypical Representationscited by 179
  18. 2019Skew-Fit: State-Covering Self-Supervised Reinforcement Learningcited by 174
  19. 2019Goal-conditioned Imitation Learningcited by 162
  20. 2023Bigger, Better, Faster: Human-level Atari with human-level efficiencycited by 147
  21. 2023HIQL: Offline Goal-Conditioned RL with Latent States as Actionscited by 141
  22. 2021URLB: Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning Benchmarkcited by 139
  23. 2024Expressive Whole-Body Control for Humanoid Robotscited by 139
  24. 2021Discovering and Achieving Goals via World Modelscited by 131
  25. 2019Reinforcement Learning Upside Down: Don't Predict Rewards -- Just Map Them to Actionscited by 125
  26. 2023Universal Humanoid Motion Representations for Physics-Based Controlcited by 116
  27. 2021Learning One Representation to Optimize All Rewardscited by 115
  28. 2023Diffusion Model is an Effective Planner and Data Synthesizer for Multi-Task Reinforcement Learningcited by 115
  29. 2018Count-Based Exploration with the Successor Representationcited by 112
  30. 2024HumanoidBench: Simulated Humanoid Benchmark for Whole-Body Locomotion and Manipulationcited by 112
  31. 2021Pretraining Representations for Data-Efficient Reinforcement Learningcited by 105
  32. 2022From Play to Policy: Conditional Behavior Generation from Uncurated Robot Datacited by 103
  33. 2018Unsupervised Control Through Non-Parametric Discriminative Rewardscited by 102
  34. 2021Dynamics-Regulated Kinematic Policy for Egocentric Pose Estimationcited by 101
  35. 2018Neural probabilistic motor primitives for humanoid controlcited by 97
  36. 2023CALM: Conditional Adversarial Latent Models for Directable Virtual Characterscited by 94
  37. 2023METRA: Scalable Unsupervised RL with Metric-Aware Abstractioncited by 86
  38. 2022Does Zero-Shot Reinforcement Learning Exist?cited by 83

50 most cited of 85 All 85 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 16; 2026: 40.

56 papers.

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  1. 2025TD-JEPA: Latent-predictive Representations for Zero-Shot Reinforcement Learningcited by 22
  2. 2025DreamControl: Human-Inspired Whole-Body Humanoid Control for Scene Interaction via Guided Diffusioncited by 15
  3. 2026OdysSim: Building Foundation Models for Human Behavior Simulationcited by 13
  4. 2025Self-Predictive Representations for Combinatorial Generalization in Behavioral Cloningcited by 12
  5. 2025Be.FM: Open Foundation Models for Human Behaviorcited by 9
  6. 2025Zero-Shot Adaptation of Behavioral Foundation Models to Unseen Dynamicscited by 8
  7. 2025Epistemically-guided forward-backward explorationcited by 8
  8. 2025Towards Robust Zero-Shot Reinforcement Learningcited by 7
  9. 2026Compositional Planning with Jumpy World Modelscited by 7
  10. 2025Optimistic Task Inference for Behavior Foundation Modelscited by 6
  11. 2025UniAct: Unified Motion Generation and Action Streaming for Humanoid Robotscited by 5
  12. 2026Scalable Exploration for High-Dimensional Continuous Control via Value-Guided Flowcited by 5
38 more
  1. 2025Reward-Aware Proto-Representations in Reinforcement Learningcited by 4
  2. 2026Soft Forward-Backward Representations for Zero-shot Reinforcement Learning with General Utilitiescited by 3
  3. 2026Can We Really Learn One Representation to Optimize All Rewards?cited by 3
  4. 2026InterReal: A Unified Physics-Based Imitation Framework for Learning Human-Object Interaction Skillscited by 3
  5. 2025Feature-Based vs. GAN-Based Learning from Demonstrations: When and Whycited by 2
  6. 2025SimDiff: Simulator-constrained Diffusion Model for Physically Plausible Motion Generationcited by 2
  7. 2025Reference Grounded Skill Discoverycited by 2
  8. 2026Zero-Shot Off-Policy Learningcited by 2
  9. 2026Regularized Latent Dynamics Prediction is a Strong Baseline For Behavioral Foundation Modelscited by 2
  10. 2026A Reward-Free Viewpoint on Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  11. 2026Scaling Behavior Foundation Model for Humanoid Robotscited by 2
  12. 2025Fine-tuning Behavioral Cloning Policies with Preference-Based Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  13. 2025A Unified Framework for Zero-Shot Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  14. 2026The Laplacian Keyboard: Beyond the Linear Spancited by 1
  15. 2026Iterative Closed-Loop Motion Synthesis for Scaling the Capabilities of Humanoid Controlcited by 1
  16. 2026EmbodMocap: In-the-Wild 4D Human-Scene Reconstruction for Embodied Agentscited by 1
  17. 2026Reward-Conditioned Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  18. 2026Maximum Entropy Behavior Exploration for Sim2Real Zero-Shot Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  19. 2026Vintix II: Decision Pre-Trained Transformer is a Scalable In-Context Reinforcement Learnercited by 1
  20. 2026Improving Zero-Shot Offline RL via Behavioral Task Samplingcited by 1
  21. 2026From Reward-Free Representations to Preferences: Rethinking Offline Preference-Based Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  22. 2026Exploration and Online Transfer with Behavioral Foundation Modelscited by 1
  23. 2026BRIDGE: An Open-Source Humanoid Platform via Morphology-Control Co-Design for Physical AIcited by 1
  24. 2025Reduced-Order Model-Guided Reinforcement Learning for Demonstration-Free Humanoid Locomotioncited by 0
  25. 2026Improving and Accelerating Offline RL in Large Discrete Action Spaces with Structured Policy Initializationcited by 0
  26. 2026Offline Reinforcement Learning of High-Quality Behaviors Under Robust Style Alignmentcited by 0
  27. 2026DROGO: Default Representation Objective via Graph Optimization in Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  28. 2026Spectral Alignment in Forward-Backward Representations via Temporal Abstractioncited by 0
  29. 2026Towards Human Motion World Models via Executable Behaviour Representationscited by 0
  30. 2026Switching Successor Measures for Hierarchical Zero-shot Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  31. 2026Zero-shot adaptation to order book dynamicscited by 0
  32. 2026Goal-Conditioned Agents that Learn Everything All at Oncecited by 0
  33. 2026Plan, Don't Pose: Long Composite Motion Generation with Text-Aligned BFMcited by 0
  34. 2026Kine2Go: Kinematic dataset for the Unitree Go2 robot with diverse gaits and motionscited by 0
  35. 2026VENOM: Versatile Embodied Network for Omni-bodied Motion trackingcited by 0
  36. 2026MotionPyramid: Hierarchical Motion Representation and Residual Interfacescited by 0
  37. 2026Reward-free Pretraining for Reinforcement Learning via Occupancy Coverage Maximizationcited by 0
  38. 2026Policy-Induced Hand Priors in Humanoid Dual-Arm Manipulation: Diagnosing and Mitigating Initial-Pose Dependencecited by 0

50 most cited of 56 All 56 (JSON)

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  1. 2025BFM-Zero: A Promptable Behavioral Foundation Model for Humanoid Control Using Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning
  2. 2022Reinforcement Learning with Action-Free Pre-Training from Videos
  3. 2026Towards Bridging the Gap between Large-Scale Pretraining and Efficient Finetuning for Humanoid Control
  4. 2024TLDR: Unsupervised Goal-Conditioned RL via Temporal Distance-Aware Representations
  5. 2025Success in Humanoid Reinforcement Learning under Partial Observation
  6. 2026Cross-Embodiment Offline Reinforcement Learning for Heterogeneous Robot Datasets
  7. 2026I-BFM: Reward-Conditioned Robust Humanoid Interaction via Unsupervised Reinforcement Learning
  8. 2025Fast Adaptation with Behavioral Foundation Models